Owen wept in utter agony. For the first time in his life he was experiencing the helpless suffering he visited on others.
Using a knife to kill someone was hard, messy, tiring work. It was also dangerous. A great many people cut themselves badly when using a knife either to defend themselves or to attack someone. A lot of force was required and blood was slippery. More often than not, their hand would slip down off the handle, cutting their palm and fingers on the blade. Because they were using such force, such injuries were usually quite serious.
Angela knew better. Her knife had a cross guard to prevent her hand from slipping up onto the blade. The cross guard wasn’t large, but it was big enough to provide a stable place to brace her right knuckle and thumb for leverage. She was always conscious of being careful not to accidentally cut herself whenever she did knife work, and the cross guard helped protect her hands.
Angela knew what she was doing and did it well. She’d never cut herself.
Owen groaned incoherently. Tears streamed from his eyes as he trembled.
“Carrie cried just like you’re crying now, didn’t she Owen? She didn’t want to suffer, to be hurt, to die, just like you don’t want those things to happen to you. Right, Owen? The only fucking difference is that she didn’t deserve it.”
Angela gritted her teeth as she twisted the blade inside him. “You do.”
He let out another wet cry.
“Right now, Owen, all you know is pain.” Angela peered into his eyes. “But through pain comes knowledge, realization, understanding. Now, in your pain, maybe you can see yourself for what an evil monster you truly are.” Her brow drew down. “An evil fucking monster who shouldn’t be allowed to live among decent people. Right, Owen? Are you beginning to understand?”
Owen nodded as he wept. She wasn’t sure he understood any of it.
Angela didn’t really care.
She did.
SEVEN
Even though it seemed like it had gone on forever, it had actually all happened very quickly. But it was getting late. Angela realized that she needed to get on with it. Still, she didn’t want it to end.
She drove the knife into his other kidney because she knew how much it would hurt. The excruciating pain made it through the fog of blood loss to widen his eyes so much it almost looked as if his eyeballs might pop right out of his head. He trembled uncontrollably. Just like Carrie and the other women he murdered had trembled.
Owen was no longer capable of posing a threat to Angela or anyone else. No other woman would die to satisfy his twisted desires. No other family would grieve and go through hell because of Owen.
There would always be others like him—there had always been murderers and there always would be—but this was at least the end of Owen bringing pain, terror, and agonizing sorrow into the world.
Angela finally got up and pulled his shredded, blood-soaked shirt off him. He was no longer able to offer any resistance. She went to the toolbox at the head of the truck bed and lifted the diamond-plate lid to retrieve a stout length of nylon rope. She’d found it by the side of the road and knew that one day it would come in handy. Today was that day.
Going to one knee, she rolled Owen over onto his stomach. He flopped down into the blood filling the channels of the truck bed like a half-dead carp. Blood dripped off the frayed legs of her shorts and ran down her legs. It dripped from the tips of her hair.
“Kind of the way you like to do things to women, right Owen? Rough and brutal? Knifing them as you fuck them so they’ll scream and thrash? That’s what you like, isn’t it? Isn’t it!”
Although he seemed to show some response, she couldn’t be sure if he was capable of hearing her anymore or if it was simply the involuntary reaction of the nervous system. She hoped that somewhere in the dim recesses of his fading consciousness he could still grasp what she was saying. She hoped that her words would escort him into death. She hoped that her words would be with him for an eternity in hell.
Despite how fast it had all happened, with the way he was losing blood from the severed artery in his arm, to say nothing of the other knife wounds bleeding both externally and internally, she didn’t think he was going to be conscious much longer. His skin was cold and pallid, so she was sure he was already going into shock.
Angela didn’t think there was a trauma center on earth that could save his sorry ass, now.
“Owen, you dumb fuck, you’re getting blood all over my truck.” She kicked him in the ribs where she’d stabbed him. “But go ahead and bleed all you want. I like it.”
As she stood over him, a boot to either side of his head, she used a finger and a thumb to wiggle a black marker pen from her back pocket. She squatted down, sitting on his head to keep him still. He coughed up blood as he tried to breathe with his one functioning lung.
Leaning over, Angela started at the bottom of his rib cage and wrote I KILLED CARRIE STRATTON. The words were intentionally upside down from the way they would be if he were standing. I LEFT HER BODY 320 YARDS UP THE TURNOFF BEFORE THE BRIDGE. The last words ended up across the backs of his shoulders.
Angela leaned back to inspect her work. It looked to her like it would be perfectly legible from a distance. Since it was a permanent marker, the blood running out of him wouldn’t wash away the words. Neither would the rain if it started in again.
She leaned in once more and rummaged around in his back right pocket. She knew from the visions that was where he kept the knife he used on the women he murdered. Once she fished it out she saw that it was a rather cheap Chinese knockoff of a large Buck folding hunting knife. She opened the blade and felt the edge. Owen didn’t take good care of his knife. The blade was dull and chipped.
She used the bent point of the blade to cut deeply into his flesh, tracing over the letters of I KILLED CARRIE STRATTON. He moaned with each dragging stroke she cut. Those words were the important part. She left the black marker lettering for the rest of the words. She wanted to make sure Carrie’s remains were found. It wouldn’t bring any joy to her family, but at least they would be able to bury her properly. It would bring closure.
Angela climbed off Owen, leaned down, and put her mouth close to his ear. “Well, Owen, all done. Sorry I had to get to the end so quickly. Ordinarily I would have taken you home to let the fun go on and on for a few days until I turned your brain to mush, but since we’re out in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night I’m going to have to wrap it up.
“See, like I told you, things could always be worse. You’re getting off easy. Easier than Carrie did. Easier than the other women you killed. I just need to put a period to it.”
Angela picked up his shirt and wiped the handle of his knife to get rid of her fingerprints just in case. Holding his knife with his shirt to avoid adding back any prints, she put the blade on the period after I KILLED CARRIE STRATTON. She leaned over, putting her weight on the handle to work the dull blade down between his ribs and finally into his heart.
Angela had been tempted to let him bleed out, to suffer in a nightmare dream state between life and death until the end came. She knew it wouldn’t be long until he crossed over into death. Truth be told, she was a bit surprised that he was still alive. But she didn’t want the remote risk of him using his dying breath to utter her name to someone.
As the knife irreparably damaged his heart, one last gurgled breath rattled out of his remaining good lung.
Angela left his knife, the one he used to murder Carrie, sticking in his back as she stuffed most of the bloody shirt in his back pocket. She tied the rope securely around one of Owen’s ankles before hopping down out of the truck.